Joel on Software - Blog Entry of
2 September, 2004 - Fortune

Joel on Software - Blog Entry of
2 September, 2004

In Usenet, whenever a single newsgroup got too large, it tended
to fork. So from comp we got comp.sys.ibm.pc which split into
smaller and smaller groups like the unloved
comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.video, created because people were sick of
talking about video drivers on the main group.

I didn’t like forks, because they make discussions less
interesting. I mean, it’s bad enough there’s a
comp.software.windows.nt.40.microsoft.notepad, does there have to
be a comp.software.windows.nt.40.microsoft.notepad.helpfile.index?
Seriously now.